Insurgents

Afghan Taliban militants have strengthened their grip on lucrative illegal mining operations in the north of the country, as security forces focus most of their efforts on battling the insurgency in the volatile south, officials said.

Government troops and insurgents fought in several parts of Syria on Sunday, apparently seeking to strengthen their positions on the eve of a ceasefire that Free Syrian Army rebels said they would observe but with major reservations.

The U.S.-led war on Islamic State has depleted the group's funds, leadership and foreign fighters, but the biggest battle yet is expected later this year in Iraq's northern city of Mosul, where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his "caliphate" two years ago.

Syrian government forces and their allies again laid siege to rebel-held eastern Aleppo on Sunday, while Turkish-backed fighters drove Islamic State from all the areas along its border, in two significant but separate developments in the multi-sided conflict.

Areas of Syria's Hama province captured by Syrian insurgents came under heavy air attack on Thursday as government forces sought to counter a major rebel assault in an area of strategic importance to President Bashar al-Assad.

A roadside bomb killed an American soldier Tuesday near the capital of Afghanistan's volatile Helmand province, following the first major US deployment to the southern city since foreign forces withdrew in 2014.

Within hours of last week's deadly bomb and arson attacks in Thailand, police and senior officials publicly ruled out any link to foreign militants and insisted the perpetrators, as yet unidentified, were homegrown.

Thai police over the weekend found and defused five explosive devices that had failed to detonate when an as yet unidentified group carried out a series of deadly bomb attacks on popular tourist spots late last week.

Syrian insurgents who broke the siege of rebel-held eastern Aleppo on Saturday in a significant territorial gain came under intense air attack from pro-government forces on Sunday trying to repel the advance which also cut government-held Aleppo's main supply route.

Syrian rebels broke through to besieged opposition-held areas in eastern Aleppo on Saturday in an assault on a major government military complex meant to end a month-long siege, insurgents and a monitoring group said.